“EMMA IN THE NIGHT” by Wendy Walker

“It was very hot the summer before I ran away.

Records were broken. Everyone was complaining. People started talking about global warming again, even though the prior winter had also broken records for snow and cold.

I think sometimes that having too much information can be a very bad thing. It pulls our attention this way and that way, that way and this way, until our heads are just spinning around and we are never able to see what’s right in front of us. We are not owls and our heads were not built to spin.

When I see and hear exploding news stories, like that summer with the heat wave, and when it makes me get worried about things, I make myself remember something I learned in the sixth grade.
We were studying the solar system and we learned about how the earth began 4.5 billion years ago and how the sun will die in about the same amount of time.

It’s so easy to think that we are important and that the things that happen to us are important.

But the truth is, we are so small, so insignificant in the scope of even just our solar system, which is itself meaningless in the scope of the Universe.

The truth is, nothing really matters unless we decide it matters.

We could set off every nuclear bomb we’ve ever made and kill all life on the planet, and Universe would just shrug and yawn because within the next 5 billion years while the sun is still shining, some kind of life would come and we would be talked about by them the way we talk about dinosaurs.”

Kindle, 2021